


stay (it doesn't have to hurt)

by calciseptine



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Poverty, Road Trips, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 12:16:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11736867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calciseptine/pseuds/calciseptine
Summary: In the morning twilight, when the desert sky is a wash of pale rose and gray, Stan leaves Dead End Flats with a single suitcase full of clothes, a wooden baseball bat, and a postcard clutched in his fist.





	stay (it doesn't have to hurt)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [_Summer of Stancest_](http://fishingboatblues.tumblr.com/post/162083646884/due-to-our-utmost-love-for-this-ship-we-have). All my love to Blue, who organized this event, gave me encouragement, and was over-all an amazing human being. ♥

The motel television has nine channels and, as he has every day since he arrived in New Mexico, Stan spends his day mindlessly switching back and forth between them. Images shift. Noise fluctuates. It helps him ignore the gnaw of hunger in his belly and the squeeze of anxiety around his lungs. There is no remote. Any time a program becomes unbearable, Stan has to get up and manually change the station.

It does little to ease the restlessness in his stagnant bones.

Eventually—when the heat of the day dissipates into evening, and the setting sun illuminates Stan's room in red—Stan gives up the distraction. He switches the television off and plops back down on the sagging edge of his mattress.

Stares at the matted shag carpet.

Runs a hand over his uncombed, sweat-damp hair.

Sighs softly and—

_KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK._

Stan's head jerks up. His heart begins to race.

_KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK._

Stan can only think of two people who would visit him at this hour. The first is the owner of the motel, a skeletal man with beady eyes and a bald head. The second is Rico, a man from whom Stan unwisely borrowed money.

_KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK._

In the sinking pit of his stomach, Stan knows it must be Rico. The motel owner already came by that morning, asking after overdue rent and threatening to get the police involved. All Stan had was a wrinkled five dollar bill, which he handed over; the other man sneered at the last of Stan's money and spat tobacco on the concrete near Stan's feet.

"Ain't worth the phone call," he said before he stalked off.

_KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK._

"Just give me a few more days, Rico!" Stan shouts as he grabs the baseball bat lying next to his bed. He immediately chokes up on the wooden handle, his knuckles white and bloodless. "I'll pay your goons back, I swear!"

Stan has said the same thing for the past three months. He was lucky, last time, to be sent home with nothing more than a pair of black eyes and a five thousand dollar deadline. He knows he won't be shown the same generosity this time around, but if Rico and his lackeys are expecting him to go down without a fight, they are in for a very rude awakening.

A second passes.

Two.

Yet instead of the telltale sound of the door being kicked in, there is the simple, metallic whisper of the mail slot. A single piece of cardstock falls to the floor. It seems innocuous, but Stan has been on the wrong side of business long enough to know that a bullet may follow.

A minute passes.

Two.

With the bat clutched in one hand, Stan gets up and creeps towards the door. He tries to keep his footsteps silent and his breathing even, but his movements seem thunderously loud in the still quiet of the room. Slowly… slowly… slowly he bends, pinches the postcard between his fingers, and—

swiftly and without finesse—

Stan sprints back to the safety of his unmade bed.

When nothing continues to happen, Stan inhales deeply and lets go of the tension in his shoulders. Then he looks at the postcard. The front is a generic picture of a forest, coniferous and verdant, complete with a perfect blue sky and a waterfall. The center of the card is dominated by a bold font that entreats:

VISIT SCENIC  
GRAVITY FALLS  
OREGON

Stan raises an eyebrow. He's been to all forty-eight contiguous states, seven Canadian provinces, and every country between Mexico and Columbia, but he's never heard of a place called Gravity Falls. _It's probably some small, backwater podunk_ , he deduces before he flips it over. _Who the hell—_

PLEASE COME!!!, the postcard reads

\- FORD, the postcard is signed.

A storm of emotions travels through Stan at the sight of those three words, hastily written and underscored thrice. Rage is the easiest to recognize because _of course_ Ford contacts him when he's in trouble. It was just like Ford to turn to Stan and expose his vulnerability when the going got tough; Stan could never say no to Ford's big blue eyes—or, in this case, his tremulous scrawl—and Ford knew it. He knew that Stan wouldn't be able to ignore a such a summons. Unconsciously or not, Ford was using the fact of Stan's loyalty to his advantage.

"Fuckin' typical," Stan spits. The postcard strains in his hands and, for a moment, Stan contemplates ripping the damn paper in half.

He doesn't.

Instead, Stan's anger dims, his grip on the postcard loosens, and worry edges in. For such a smart guy, Ford could sometimes be an _unbelievable_ idiot, frequently letting his curiosity overrule his common sense. He was never incompetent nor was he liable to do something he didn't want to, either, so ff he needs help, and is willing to ask Stan after ten years of silence, then he's probably way in over his head.

_Goddamn,_ Stan thinks as he reads the plea again. _Ten fuckin' years._

This is sorrow. It is a heavy thing, bone-deep and pervasive, and unlike his other feelings, Stan always carries it with him. Part of it is due to the unexpected turn his life took—Stan never planned on being estranged and homeless—but a majority of it comes from losing the one thing he always thought he'd have.

The other half of him.

His brother.

_Ford._

Stan exhales shakily. Rubs the damp off his skin with his callused fingertips. Looks down at the card in his hand for the thousandth time since he picked it up and traces the lines with his eyes.

P-L-E-A-S-E-C-O-M-E-!-!-!  
-F-O-R-D

The last thing Stan feels that night is resignation.

.

In the morning twilight, when the desert sky is a wash of pale rose and gray, Stan leaves Dead End Flats with a single suitcase full of clothes and a wooden baseball bat. Dust kicks up behind the wheels of the El Diablo, billowing up behind him like clouds. He grits his teeth at the obviousness.

An hour passes.

Stan drives with his heart in his throat. He constantly checks his rearview mirror to see if he's being followed. He is less concerned about skipping his dues on the motel owner and more concerned about Rico and his network of sour-faced lackeys.

Another hours passes.

The sun rises high enough over the horizon to turn everything yellow and brown.

Three hours later, suburbs begin to bloom in the red sand. Houses spread inward, becoming denser and denser until they rise into the city of Albuquerque. Gaudy skyscrapers made of steel and glass glitter like diamonds amid the tired landscape. Stan would be impressed if he hadn't learned to hate cities after spending a long winter dodging cops in Columbus, Ohio.

Albuquerque fades quickly.

The desert looms.

San Ysidro. La Jara. Counselor. Nageezi. Farmington.

As he nears the border between New Mexico and Arizona, Stan keeps an eye out for a medium-sized town with a gas station slash diner. He finds one right out of Shiprock, pulls in, and fills his tank among a slew of vacationing families and grizzled truckers. He brings his enormous, dog-eared road map into the diner with him, and grins when he's seated at a booth instead of the counter.

"A pot of coffee," he tells his waitress, a woman several years his senior. Her dark hair is pulled into a fraying bun and there is a huge ketchup stain along her sleeve. She keeps glancing at the toddler two booths down, a small monster who is smearing mac-n-cheese across the table. "And the number seven, and a cherry pie milkshake."

When Stan gets his double bacon burger, fries, and shake, he devours it. He hasn't eaten in nearly three days and the uncomfortable bloat of fullness is a welcome change to the scratch of emptiness.

"Check?" the waitress asks when she comes to collect his plate.

"More coffee, please," Stan replies, gesturing to the road map opened in front of him. "Need to decide where to go next."

Her returning nod is harried and her eyes remain on the toddler. The unruly child has recently graduated from wiping his food on the table to throwing handfuls on the floor and giggling.

It doesn't take Stan long to map out the next leg of his journey. The quickest route to Oregon is to take U.S. Route 191 through Utah, but in order reach said route, Stan needs to either continue west into Arizona or head north into Colorado. The problem arises from the fact that Stan has outstanding arrest warrants in both states. The Arizona detour is shorter, but the charges—

Two booths down, the waitress tries to tell the toddler's parents to control their son's behavior. The father does not take this well and begins to shout.

_That's my cue,_ Stan thinks.

And as the rest of the diner turns to watch the waitress and the father get into a screaming match about appropriate child care, Stan drains the last of his coffee, rolls up his travel atlas, and walks out the front door without spending a dime.

.

Stan heads west into Arizona and spends fifty uncomfortable minutes on Route 64. He passes Teec Nos Pos then turns north at Red Mesa. By the time he crosses the Utah border, he has seen a grand total of seven other cars.

Bluff. Monticello. Moab. Price.

Utah is made of the same red-brown dirt and pale green scrub that is present in New Mexico, and after twelve hours on the road, Stan isn't paying as much attention to the road as he should be. This is why he panics when a mule deer appears suddenly in front of him; he inhales sharply, slams on the breaks, and knocks his nose hard against the leather steering wheel.

"Shit!" Stan curses loudly, clutching his face. Unhurt, the deer prances off. "Shit—fuck—ow, ow, _ow_!"

Blood leaks warm onto Stan's hand as he pulls over onto the gravel shoulder and parks. He reaches blindly into the back seat, grabs the first thing that feels like a t-shirt, and waits for the bleeding to stop. It takes several minutes. The numbing flush of adrenaline wears off before Stan pulls the worn cotton away.

"Goddamnit," Stan curses when he sees that he managed to grab his last good button down. Blood blooms vivid across a stretch of pale blue, like the desert sun setting west on the winter horizon, and not all of it was captured. Stan's hand is smeared pink and huge drops fell on his t-shirt, where his belly swells fat beneath the fabric. " _God fuckin' damn it_."

Stan's only stroke of luck is that his nose is not broken. It's tender, so much so that he hisses as he gingerly taps the bridge, but he knows this from vast experience that the bone is intact.

Once Stan cleans as much of his blood up as he can, he gets out of the car and pulls his shirt over his head. It is colder than he expects. The chill hits him hard and his teeth immediately begin to chatter. It's pathetic for a man who was New Jersey born and bred, but Stan has spent the last four years in the deep south and beyond; even in the middle of winter, it was an easy fifty degrees in New Mexico.

Utah is much colder.

Stan quickly stashes his bloodied shirts in the trunk, then grabs his suitcase out of the backseat. There is nothing warm inside. Stan curses as he grabs his least stained article of clothing, a once white shirt that's gray with age and yellow under the pits. It smells like aged leather and stale sweat. Unpleasant. He pulls it over his head. Ignores the stench. Gets back in the El Diablo and cranks up the heat. Stan shivers. It is only going to get colder the further north he goes and he doesn't have a coat, or gloves, or a hat.

Or money.

He looks up at the picture of Ford he keeps above him. Ford smiles so hard it is nearly a grimace and Stan beams. Stan remembers how Ford felt tucked against his side, warm and pliant, both when the picture was taken and later that night when Ford crept into the bottom bunk.

Stan sighs.

"The things I do for you, Sixer," he mutters, and gets back on the road.

.

Colton. Soldier Summit. Tucker.

Mapleton. Springville.

Provo. Orem. Pleasant Grove.

Salt Lake City.

Stan stops as at every gas station he sees. His tank is running towards low, but he never fuels up. Instead, he scrounges for fallen change: for pennies turned black, for scratched nickels, for thin dimes worn flat, for rare and defaced quarters. He hates the pitying looks he gets when he scavenges and ignores them the best he can, hunched against the deepening cold.

Woods Cross. Bountiful. Centerville.

Another Farmington.

Kaysville. Layton. Clearfield. Roy.

Stan's pockets are full and the El Diablo is empty when he pulls into the parking lot of a darkened thrift store. It's midnight. His eyes itch. He's hungry. He's thirsty. He's cold. He grabs the remaining clothes out of his suitcase and piles them atop his body in an attempt to shield himself from the night. He thinks, _This ain't got nothin' on Ohio,_ and pushes his seat back as far as it will go.

Closes his eyes.

And sleeps fitfully till the morning sun breaks white and weak over the pavement.

.

Stan has been to hundreds of thrift shops in the past ten years and he has never understood how they can all smell the same. Like a pair of old shoes and an abandoned house and musty clothes, faint and all at once, familiarity edged with disquiet.

He hates it.

Walking through the racks, Stan searches for the heaviest coat he can find. The best options are long gone, however, picked out before winter could reach its brutal peak, and Stan ends up with three hangers. The first is a heavy leather bomber with no visible tears and a soft collar; the second is a wool peacoat that falls to his knees; and the third is a red parka lined with synthetic fur.

Stan tries the peacoat on first. It's a size too small, unable to stretch over his shoulders and the thickness of his waist, and the fabric smells like spoiled milk. Stan wrinkles his nose as he takes it off and puts it back on the hanger. The peacoat is a definite no.

Next, Stan tries on the leather jacket. It fits well. Really well. So well that Stan takes a peek at himself in the dingy mirror at the end of the makeshift aisle. He looks big, yes, but in a good way: brawny instead of fat, rugged instead of homeless, nineteen instead of thirty-one. Unfortunately, Stan's vanity cannot give the leather jacket another layer of needed insulation, nor can it lower the price tag that reflects its good condition. So he sighs, takes it off, and ignores the sting of want.

The last coat is Stan's best option. It's heavy, it has a hood, and there aren't any rips or thin patches of fabric. The zipper pulls up smoothly. Indeed, the only detriments are the motor oil stains on the shoulder, sleeve, and hem, but the faint scent of detergent Stan smells means that the parka was obviously washed before being donated.

Stan hasn't done laundry in months.

Decided, Stan then searches the store for some gloves. He can't find any. Instead, he finds a hat and a matching pair of mittens; all three pieces are dark and smell like damp, but Stan needs them. The El Diablo's heat can be intermittent in the extreme cold—often not working at all—and it hurts Stan's hands to hold a frozen leather steering for long periods of time. 

"Better than nothin'," Stan tells himself before he scoops up the hat and mittens and heads up to the front of the store. He goes to the only cashier working, a reedy teenage boy with a thin face, a thin mouth, and a thin mustache. Skinny doesn't greet him, merely begins to punch in the prices after Stan sets his stuff down.

"Seven fifty," he intones when he's finished bundling everything into a plastic shopper.

Stan digs in his pockets. Dumps all his dirty change on the counter. Skinny exhales through his nose in irritation at the small pile, but says nothing as he sorts the coins and adds them to his till: quarters first, then dimes, then nickels, then pennies.

"You owe forty-three cents," Skinny says.

Stan is too tired to argue. Too tired to be sarcastic. He just shrugs and says, "S'all I got, kiddo."

For the first time since Stan walked up, the teenager lifts his gaze from the counter and looks at Stan. Stan has no illusions about what the kid sees. He's a fat, middle-aged man with an uncombed mullet, bags under his eyes, and a gross t-shirt. Skinny probably sees someone like Stan every time he works. Sees the symptoms of poverty—the weary slump, the flat eyes, the resignation—

Skinny closes the drawer and hands Stan his purchases.

"Have a good day," Skinny says.

"Yeah," Stan gruffs. "You too."

.

Stan dons his new coat in the parking lot. Tosses the hat and mittens onto the passenger seat. Starts the El Diablo and freezes when it takes a moment for the engine to respond. Thanks a god he never believed in when a familiar rumble fills his ears.

"Halfway there," Stan tells the dashboard. "Just one more day."

The fuel gauge sits dangerously low until Stan can find a small, slow gas station at the edge of town. The attendant manning the till inside looks up and waves. Stan returns the gesture with a smile before he fills his tank.

Stan looks up. The attendant waves again. Stan smiles again even as unease begins to prickle beneath his skin. He needs the attendant to be distracted so he can drive away without the police being called or his license plate number being taken down. Thankfully, most people are easily bored, and Stan only needs to spend a few minutes cleaning out his car for the attendant's attention to turn elsewhere.

_Ha!_ Stan crows silently as he slips into his car. _Gotcha!_

And a minute later, when the attendant looks up from her big book of crosswords, the only thing left outside will be a bin full of garbage.

.

Willard. Brigham City. Tremonton.

The earth turns tan. Naked aspens and thin pines sprout out of the ground between knee-high shrubs. Little towns with names like Blue Creek and Snowville pop up and disappear faster than Stan can blink.

Less than two hours after Stan has left Ogden, he crosses the border into Idaho.

Juniper. Sublett. Cotterel. Burley.

By the time Stan hits Twin Falls, the temperate drops below freezing.

King Hill. Chalk Cut.

Mountain Home.

Mayfield.

By the time Stan hits Boise, he sees snow for the first time in years. The heat of the desert has softened his remembrance of it, made him forget how deceiving it was, how pervasive. White flakes falls from an unchanging gray sky and build on the black pavement of western-winding interstate. He skids twice on unseen ice and nearly ends up in a ditch before he remembers to mind his lead foot.

Nampa. Caldwell.

Then a green sign says in white: Welcome to Oregon.

.

Vale.

The towns begin to shrink—the towns begin to s t r e t c h—

Harper.

The towns begin to hide behind the boughs of dense conifers—to peek through the skeletal branches of sleeping deciduous trees—

Juntura.

The towns begin to whisper secrets in the stillness—

.

WELCOME TO GRAVITY FALLS

.


End file.
